Chairperson, hon members, Ministers and Deputy Ministers, Deputy Minister of Correctional Services, chairperson of the portfolio committee, chairperson of the National Council for Correctional Services Judge Desai, Inspecting Judge Van Zyl, National Commissioner of Correctional Services, the entire management and staff of the Department of Correctional Services, our distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful for this opportunity to present the Correctional Services budget to this House and, in doing so, I must thank my predecessor, Mr Ngconde Balfour, for the work he has done together with his Deputy, Ms Loretta Jacobus.
This speech is our map going forward, on the basis of the marching orders we got from our President, Comrade Jacob Zuma, who said in his state of the nation address and The Presidency Budget Vote, among other things, and I quote:
... we [must] work with the people and our public servants in particular to build a developmental state, improve public services and strengthen democratic institutions.
We have to work harder and smarter to achieve all these objectives, and we believe that the leadership of government is equal to the task.
It is quite clear to us that the President wants us to create partnerships with our people across the board, and give leadership to our public servants and, together, design smarter ways in which to work to create conditions that will allow us to deliver the kind of service that will raise the level of our correctional system to compare favourably with the best in the world.
We must therefore look exhaustively at governance matters, at Correctional Services, and opt for measures that will provide us with a solid administration that will be the building block towards a formidable vehicle, which, among other things, will raise the standard of work, enthusiasm, creativity and loyalty on the part of all officials, and will clean out all the systems and put an end to corruption.
My first impressions in the department are that there seems to be a willingness from the majority of the officials to help create a new ethos at Correctional Services that will satisfy the orders given by the President. I want to assure those who want to contribute in the manner defined by the President that their commitment will be rewarded. Those who want to be a drawback will be dealt with in accordance with our regulations and the relevant law.
There is space for all officials at Correctional Services to interact with the Minister via e-mail. En route to this Budget Vote presentation, a number of officials communicated with me about a variety of things they wanted me to pay particular attention to. I have read each of those comments with interest and although I may not meet all the expectations raised, I want to assure the concerned officials that I have not spiked any of the submissions. I will find time in the future to interact with the officials.
Allow me to extend a special greeting to those officers and offenders watching this interaction from our various correctional centres. As with most things in life, the future is sometimes best seen through the lens of the past. This is very important, because it enables us to appreciate the strides we have taken as well as understand our shortcomings and better commit to sound plans and programmes going into the future.
This Parliament sits here with a renewed sense of purpose and strength, best expressed by the President in his inauguration speech. It is at moments like this that we need to take a step back and ask ourselves: "What is the reason for the existence of the Department of Correctional Services?" Allow us therefore to answer that question in the following way: The Department of Correctional Services is a critical component of the justice, crime prevention and security cluster. It is also an integral part of our social services cluster, given that it is also about people and society. It is about victims; it is about correctional officers; it is about families; it is about communities and offenders. It is critical that, as we debate this budget, we be reminded of this vast mandate and the impact it has on our security as a state as well as the values of our communities.
The Department of Correctional Services is a large institution, boasting over 41 000 employees, and over 115 753 sentenced offenders and 49 477 awaiting-trial detainees. As you can imagine, it takes a well-oiled machinery of systems, processes and people effectively and efficiently to manage service delivery in such a department. The number of officials will be increased during the current year by 2 200. In the process of increasing our human resources, we are aware particularly of the challenges we face with regard to equity in the workplace.
Ayanda Mathwala and Belinda Low-Shang are among the personnel of the Department of Correctional Services who have urged me and the Deputy Minister to pay particular attention to the matter of gender equity in the department. This is a matter in which we will not fail you. We have already raised the issue with senior management. We want to see capable women and people living with disability in all levels of our department, in operations and administration. [Applause.]
While on these matters, allow me to address some of the issues of governance in the department and the Auditor-General's report. The department has moved from five qualifications in the 2006-07 report to one qualification for the 2007-08 financial year. This is a welcome achievement by the department. The single matter that the Auditor-General was not satisfied with, relates to asset management. Although we are committed to pursuing a clean audit report, I must say that it is likely that the issue of asset management will be a thorn in our side even in 2008-09. We will be working closely with the Auditor-General's office to deal with this and other matters of concern that they have raised as part of our risk management processes.
One of the many matters we have had to contend with in our service delivery, the matter of the occupation-specific dispensation, has received widespread attention. I am pleased to confirm that in the early hours of Wednesday, 24 June, the employer and the unions signed Resolution 2/2009 on the occupation-specific dispensation. All parties to this process have committed to close interaction based on mutual respect - even when we differ in future. We will continue to strengthen existing structures to sustain these relations. I must also express thanks for the efforts of our own Department of Correctional Services team, who worked diligently with the Department for the Public Service and Administration and the National Treasury to deliver us to this point.
Together with the Department for the Public Service and Administration and the Treasury, we have established a team to implement the occupation- specific dispensation agreement. The team will report to the Ministers every month on progress. We will also be seeking solutions to the critical matter of attracting scarce skills into the department and retaining them. These skills are mainly in the health and medical professions, which are a core pillar of services expected of the department.
We further wish to announce that we will be implementing the seven-day establishment as from tomorrow, 1 July 2009. We have been interfacing with the Minister for the Public Service and Administration on regulating this matter, which will go a long way in curbing overexpenditure that saw us at the beginning of this financial year with a R500 million deficit, mainly caused by weekend overtime claims. This forced the department to introduce drastic cost-cutting measures, which included placing a moratorium on the filling of certain posts. I call on all officials of the department to join us on this journey and for them to ensure a smooth transition from the five- day to the seven-day establishment.
On the same note, I must thank the Minister for the Public Service and Administration for assisting us finally to reach this agreement with the unions.
We have taken note of concerns expressing a need for budget realignment to better reflect the commitment to our rehabilitation, care and development as well as social integration programmes. Let me paraphrase the White Paper and remind this House that our approach to corrections is based on the understanding that the issue is not the duty of the Department of Correctional Services alone. It is a joint responsibility that begins with the family and society's institutions of religion, education, culture, etc. Of course, it is the responsibility of the Department of Correctional Services, as part of the criminal justice system, to mend the broken pieces, primarily through its correctional sentence plan.
The department's care and development programme addresses the following matters: Enhancement and creation of opportunities; acquisition of knowledge and new skills; development of an appropriate attitude of serving with excellence; pursuit of a programme for self-sustainability; achievement of principled relations with others; and the preparation of the offender to return to society with an improved chance of leading a crime- free life as a productive and law-abiding citizen. These are all issues the Deputy Minister will be able to elaborate on.
In his book The Number, a book on gangs in South African prisons, Jonny Steinberg relates the words of one of his characters in Pollsmoor as follows, and I quote:
You go into prison on a charge of common assault ... when you get out, that's it; your record says you are a criminal. Nobody will ever give you a job. So you become a criminal, because that's all that is left for you ... The system, Sir, is a factory for criminals. It makes criminals out of decent people.
This talks to everything we do not want in our facilities, yet it is a reality in some cases. Of course, we do not want our facilities to be factories for criminals; on the other hand, we cannot allow our centres to become places for vanity and be so comfortable as to encourage repeat offending, that has seen many offenders returning to our prisons. This is a very difficult balance to maintain. On the one hand there is Correctional Services, while on the other there is society. The first balance, therefore, is the relationship between the two. When offenders are released from the correctional centres, they must be accommodated by society and be helped to stay away from crime and away from prison.
One of our officers, Mr D Jackson, had this to say in his e-mail to me, and I quote:
I know there are farms that can be used to help fight poverty in this country. With small inputs to utilise our capacity we can help people that are in big need.
I share the sentiment expressed by this concerned officer. Allow me to address the matter of offender labour. The Correctional Services Act requires that sufficient work must be provided, as far as practicable, to keep sentenced offenders active for a normal working day, and an offender may be compelled to do such work. Unfortunately, many offenders are not kept active for a normal working day due to a number of factors, such as the unavailability of suitable work opportunities as well as personnel and security considerations - whatever suitable work means. The Act also allows the offender to elect the type of work he or she prefers to perform, if such choice is in accordance with an appropriate vocational programme. I suspect the interpretation of these legal provisions by some may well be the reason many elect to remain in their cells, watching television during the day rather than working and contributing to society. There must be a way, surely, where those who have offended against society could be given the opportunity to contribute towards government's projects to create conditions for a better life for all our people. Offenders should be able to contribute to the economic growth and infrastructure development agenda on the basis of government's key priorities over the next five years.
There have been instances in the past where offenders did do some work, for example, we successfully repaired and upgraded the Department of Social Development's secure care facilities in Kroonstad and Qwa-qwa using offender labour. Offenders cleaned a piece of garden at Portlands High School here in the Western Cape. In Langa they cleaned a school for people living with disability. There are many examples. However, I feel that we could do better in economic growth and infrastructure development, and in particular with the building of schools in areas where you have correctional centres. It is for this reason that I have expressed to the National Commissioner the need to research this area and develop a national framework to ensure better utilisation of offender labour for the benefit of our communities, in the context of rehabilitation, skills development and social reintegration, as envisaged in the Correctional Services Act. That research must include consultation across the board to accommodate views from as many stakeholders as possible.
I want, at this stage, to focus a bit on the matter of medical care for offenders. We all know of the strain that our Department of Health faces in this regard. The Department of Correctional Services is not immune to these challenges as we struggle to attract, in the first instance, medical professionals to work in our department. The unfortunate reality is that we still have persons with psychiatric difficulties and disabilities in our facilities, who share communal cells with the rest of the inmate population. I find this unacceptable. Women and children in our facilities also require a particular degree of medical attention. I raised these matters when I met recently with some members of the SA Medical Association. Those discussions were useful and insightful. The meeting with Sama was influenced by our commitment to maintain certain minimum standards of care that flow from the obligations prescribed by our law on the question. One of the prerequisites to implement our programme of minimum care to the inmates is to design a creative way to attract medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses, psychologists, social workers and other relevant professionals to serve at our facilities. As I stated earlier, we trust that the occupation-specific dispensation will go a long way in addressing this matter. At that meeting we also agreed that we would soon have a round table to discuss health issues in the context of the Department of Correctional Services.
The application of section 79 of the Correctional Services Act has been the subject of some controversy over the past year. The heading of this section in the Act, which reads "Correctional Supervision or Parole on Medical Grounds", is in fact misleading, as this section is limited to an offender who has been diagnosed as being in the final phases of any terminal disease or condition to die a consolatory and dignified death. I have therefore requested the Correctional Supervision and Parole Review Board, through its chairperson, Judge Desai, to review the application of this section and to make proposals to me with regard to medical parole in a much broader sense. This task will include the setting of guidelines for the application of the legislation as it stands in order to ensure a degree of consistency. For instance, it may well be advisable to appoint medical professionals to advise the Correctional Supervision and Parole Review Board on these matters. We hope that the Health Professions Council of South Africa will assist in setting acceptable standards for determination of the terminal stage of illnesses.
Our parole system is not a wanton licence to freedom and neither does it nullify the actual sentence imposed by the courts. The parole system aims to extend and grant opportunities for second chances. We hope that, as parole is considered, particular attention is paid to the matter of victims of crimes, especially victims of violent crimes such as murder, robbery and all forms of crimes against women and children. Similarly, offenders who commit further crimes whilst in custody must not expect any sympathy from our parole system. The current proposed incarceration framework, whilst setting general minimum detention standards for all offenders, will particularly prescribe a stricter regime for this category, including victim involvement in cases of violent crime offenders.